Editing Death Guard (section)

== Disposition ==

The Death Guard codex indicates that of all the Traitor Legions, they are one of the most ordered and coherent, maintaining a sensible command structure and chain of command all the way from top to bottom similar to how it used to be way back during the Great Crusade.

At the top stands Mortarion himself, attended by the various officers of the legion and his [[Deathshroud]].

Below him there are seven '''Plague Companies''' commanded by a powerful Lord or Daemon Prince. Each company tends to have a preferred combat style as well as carrying a particular disease.
*'''1st Company - Harbingers:''' Commanded by [[Typhus]], and includes the [[Plague Fleet]]. They carry hundreds of strains of [[Zombie Plague]].
*'''2nd Company - The Inexorable:''' Has a huge number of battle tanks and obviously prefers mechanised assault. They carry the "Ferric Blight" which infects armour and vehicles with crawling rust.
*'''3rd Company - Mortarion's Anvil:''' Defensive siege specialists. Its warriors carry the "Gloaming Bloat" which infects them with sweaty fever that makes them speak in gurgles.
*'''4th Company - The Wretched:''' Commanded by a sentient plague made up of a gestalt daemonic consciousness called the "Eater of Lives." The 4th insists on having Sorcerers in command roles and incorporates daemonic summoning into its tactics. Its warriors carry the "Eater Plague", which is most likely a manifestation of the Eater of Lives.
*'''5th Company - Poxmongers:''' Use a lot of daemon engines. They carry the "Sangous Flux" which makes them leave blood clots and red trails wherever they go.
*'''6th Company - Ferrymen / Brethren of the Fly:''' Command the Plague Fleets and acquire new ships for the Legion. They also have a large number of [[Blightlord Terminator]]s who carry a parasite called "the Droning".
*'''7th Company - Mortarion's Chosen Sons:''' They are the legion's alchemists and are blessed with "Crawling Pustulance".

The Plague Companies are made up of an unnumbered amount of '''Sepsis Cohorts''' which contain about 700 Plague Marines each. They probably function similar to loyalist [[Space Marine Chapter|Chapters]] in that they are a fully self contained fighting force, equipped with its own attendant officers, auxiliaries, vehicles and daemon engines. Each sepsis cohort also has command of its own fleet assets so it can move from place to place.

Each Sepsis Cohort is split into two '''Maladictums''' probably of around 350 warriors each, plus any assets that get assigned to it.

The Maladictums are sub-divided into seven '''Colonies''' which is similar in function to a loyalist Company. Each colony containing seven squads of variable strength, ''(350 into seven colonies leaves 50 men divided into seven squads of around seven men each)'' and can be equipped in whatever manner their commander deems appropriate. Although typically the 1st Colony of each maladictum will be exclusively made up of [[Blightlord Terminator]]s.

Though what this means in practice is debatable however, the Legion is broken up across the whole galaxy with maladictums and colonies from various plague companies fighting together in forces called '''Vectoriums''' whose uniform often manifests itself to a single identifiable scheme and take on a new name for themselves chosen by their leader, so identifying which Plague Company that an individual warrior or squad has come from based solely on his colour scheme would be a nightmare, it would be simpler to just identify him by what diseases he carries.

The organisation of the Legion probably gets further complicated by the fact that some vectoriums, such as the Favoured Sons and the Rotworm Brotherhood, have gone double-renegade and actively rebelled against their Primarch, forming independent warbands of their own.

The Death Guard are said to be one of the few Traitor Legions to have actually grown since the Horus Heresy; and have fought entire wars over new Gene-Seed stocks or for control over recruits. Coupled with the sheer resilience of Plague Marines in general means that in comparison to before their corruption to Chaos their numbers have only increased more quickly since their damnation. In terms of actual numbers though, it can only be a matter of speculation. It is known that at the start of the Horus Heresy they had 95,000 warriors. Even though is reasonable to assume that number would have been heavily diminished by the conclusion of the Siege of Terra and the Scourging that followed; the implication is that the Death Guard are stronger than they have ever been, thus it can be comfortably guessed that the number has grown to equal or even exceed their former strength, which probably means that each Plague Company has ''more'' than nineteen Sepsis Cohorts of 700 warriors each.

(Though they are still far behind the Black Legion in total numbers as well as number of ships)